The present invention relates to a weft reservoir controller used for freely changeable alternate weaving on a fluid-jet loom, and more particularly relates to an improvement in control of a weft reservoirs used for a fluid-jet loom in which two or more sets of weft reservoirs are used in combination for sequential reservation and delivery of weft under pin control.
In the construction of a weft reservoir of the above-described type, a yarn guide used for winding of a weft is rigidly and mechanically coupled to a control pin or pins used for delivery of the weft. That is, since the winding function is closely related to the delivering function of the reservoir, any change in one function unavoidably accompanies a corresponding change in the other function. As a consequence, operational sequence of the reservoir has to be strictly timed to that of the loom for which the reservoir is used. In other words, precise sequence adjustment has to be carried out at the stage of preparatory winding on the reservoir.
This need for the advanced sequence adjustment is quite unsuited for freely changeable alternate weaving in which different wefts are inserted into sheds following a given programme. A plurality of weft reservoirs are used for freely changeable alternate weaving and the number of the weft reservoirs corresponds in general to that of the type of wefts to be used. In order to adequately meet the recent general demand in market for supply of textile products of various types, it has become necessary at factories to change the mode of alternate weaving frequently. For example, the mode is changed from two-pick alternate weaving with two different wefts to one-pick alternate weaving with three different wefts. At every change in mode of alternate weaving, the above-described sequence adjustment has to be performed on all reservoirs to be involved in the new alternate weaving. This work requires a great deal of manual labor while resulting in significant rise in production cost. In addition, the need for manual maintenance forms a serious bar to smooth introduction of automation into the process of freely changeable alternate weaving.